Blessed are the Peacemakers - 1 Jesus and the Good Samaritan

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Part One – Jesus, the Peacemaker

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” –Matthew 5:9

            The weather turned cooler this weekend. Autumn does not officially begin until September 23, but this weekend’s weather turned autumn like. Our relatively cool summer had enough hot in it that we found the transition joyous.  The news stories this summer often reported brutal heated passions reflecting racial divisions in America and frightening news of beheadings by a new terror threat, civil war in Syria, battles in the eastern regions of Ukraine and war between Israel and Hamas resulting in a devastated Gaza. The news seemed to make Bible promises that one day humanity would beat its swords into ploughshares sound like a fairy tale. I think many Christians imagine that peace is hopelessly deferred to an age that is outside of our input. Yet Jesus when speaking on the Mount declared “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) Those words seem to imply that there will be those who labor and work for peace to the point that they help bring it about. Perhaps like other blessings, we have not because we ask not, believe not, and labor not to bring the dream to a reality.

            In recent weeks two of the news stories seemed to especially be impressed upon me. The events in Ferguson told me that racial divisions exist far more than I had imagined. I began to follow a small number of Gaza residents during their war with Israel and have continued to follow their postings since the war. I am beginning to see them as human beings and not as faceless numbers of a people group we have learned to regard with suspicion. I had some specific examples of places where I felt peacemakers were needed, but I didn’t know until this day’s church service how to introduce the overall concept of a peacemaker. But the idea of a peacemaker came alive for me as we considered Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in our service this Sunday.

            If you have studied the Gospel accounts you have probably noticed how Jesus did not let a leading question keep him from answering the issue being concealed instead of the question being asked. Jesus also did not let the way words were defined limit him in addressing the issues of life.

            Have you ever thought of what Jesus did when he said “Love your enemies”? Over the years of living in a nation that is a superpower I have watched how we are prepared for war when our leaders want us to go to war. They prepare us to think of those with whom we will go to war as an enemy. An enemy is invariably treated as someone so intent on evil that they can hardly any longer be considered human. They are viewed somehow as monsters. That is how people believing their nation should go to war lead people normally not desiring war to believe they must go to war. The drum beat signaling the march to war is played as the litany of evils committed by “the other” is recited until the little people who never knew they wanted war are convinced that they must demand their nation to do something. This must have been part of why Jesus taught that murder wasn’t just killing someone but being angry at them without just cause. He understood that generally we have to cease thinking of the other as a human being before we can be convinced we can just go ahead and pull the trigger and take someone’s life. We kill an enemy first by defining them as monster and not as human being so that when we take their life thy have long been dead to us in any human sense.

            Jesus took that carefully constructed attack on the other’s humanity by uttering a single command. He said “Love your enemy.” After the proclaimers of hate had carefully built an image denying the enemy’s humanity, that single command to love your enemies let us all know that the other whom we are being called upon to kill – is a human being.

            When Jesus came to be a peacemaker, to be the mediator between God and man, he came seeing beyond the label of man as enemy in enmity against God. Jesus came not only seeing our humanity, but he came joining us in our humanity, identifying as one in our humanity for our sake that he might bring us to God having been put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit.

            Do you see how close what Jesus did as a mediator for us is to how Jesus described what the Good Samaritan did for the man wounded and lying near death. A lawyer, actually an expert in Biblical Law, asked Jesus to define for him who his neighbor was. I can picture a Christian today asking a similar question. The question being asked is probably something akin to this. Jesus, we know that this world is full of good people and bad people. We know that if we are not careful we will become too involved with the wrong sort of people. So how am I to know who I should hang out with as my neighbor and who I should avoid? Who is my neighbor?

            Jesus answers this from an altogether different perspective than how the lawyer asked it. He described a priest and a Levite that both avoided the wounded man in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The man had been beaten, robbed, left naked, and half-dead. If very quickly someone did not get the man help he would die. Then the Samaritan came upon the man, the Samaritan who Jews generally looked down upon for their inferior religion. The Samaritan bandaged the man and treated his wounds best as he could, placed him on his donkey and got him to a place where he could be looked after until he recovered. Jesus then asked the lawyer, “Who was the neighbor to the man beaten and left for dead? The question Jesus said is not who is my neighbor but am I going to be a neighbor?

Image found in blog at https://dainspires.wordpress.com/tag/good-samaritan/

 

            I wonder if Jesus did not see himself as a Samaritan as he told the story. He had seen the religious leaders of his day and he saw so many of them in reality unconcerned with the actual plight of those suffering from what sin had done to mankind. Sin had come upon humanity, it had robbed us, beaten us, stripped us to a point of nakedness, and had left us half-dead. The priest and the Levite saw it and walked by. But who was Jesus as far as the religious leaders were concerned? He was an uncertified minister that hadn’t gone to any of the schools, or been trained by a proper rabbi. He was increasingly viewed as a threat to Israel. So I wonder if as he viewed himself as one marginalized and viewed as an outcast in Israel if perhaps he didn’t describe his own ministry in telling of the Samaritan who bound the man’s wounds, and cared for his humanity until a full healing could be accomplished.

            I believe that the first characteristics of a peacemaker will be those of a neighbor who sees through the hardened wounds of a disfigured and disordered person the fullness of humanity waiting to be restored to fullness. Such a one will help those at war to see that those with whom they war are also the wounded disfigured and disordered persons needing their wounds attended and to be taken to a safe place where they can at last fully heal. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)